On a recent trip home to Buffalo I ran into Jeff Van Buren at the Hippodrome and he gave me a copy of the most recent edition of Shooter - the billiard publication he acquired from me way back in 94.

It was great to see Jeff for the first time in about a decade. After purchasing my original publication, he focused on building the Shooter's Tour into a multi-state production with over 1,000 players. I guess he took a sabatical from publishing, opened a pool room in Perry and is now refocusing. I'll definately be trying to follow how he's making out up there in the coming months.

What was interesting is that he told me Carl Galante has a bunch of old copies of the original Shooter. Since I don't have anywhere near the complete set myself, the next time I'm in Buffalo, I'm going to try to get with Carl for copies.

Closure of The Pump Inn
On a more disappointing note, I found out that The Pump Inn closed back in November, 2005. For anybody into bar box pool knows, the Pump was synonmous with pool players, Saturday night action and charity tournaments run by Norm and Diane Skulski. I got to speak with Diane about the closing; she's now working at the old Metropolitan right next door to Pocketeer. I think that space has a fantastic amount of potential as the next mecca for Buffalo bar-box.

Looking back, I think I probably was hanging out at The Pump during its heyday. Every weekend brought a lot of players. KC Cogan, Mario, Jerry Howard, ReyRey, Phil Segio, the Kid, Fast Eddie, Billy Soles, Uncle Mark, Mark Hatch, Paul McKeal, Dennis Hatch, Joe Coia, Santo Merlo and the late Joe Mueller all would be there on Saturday nights for the eight ball tournament. You never know who would stop in. I saw a few touring pros and road players stop by. Everybody would match up. Of course who could forget AFT, Diane, Larrry the Magician and some of the other characters.

It went on for awhile - about a good year and a half I would say. Every weekend. Then things gradually petered off. Everybody just sort of moved on. It was great while it lasted. I got to see it first hand.